[A-CG40] Earth System Observation Impacts on Climate and Ocean Predictions

[ACG40-05] ODYSEA: a satellite mission to advance knowledge of ocean dynamics and air-sea interaction

★Invited Papers

*Tong Lee¹, Sarah Gille², Fabrice Ardhuin³, Mark Bourassa⁴, Paul Chang⁵, Sophie Cravatte⁶, Gerald Dibarboure⁷, Tom Farrar⁸, Melanie Fewings⁹, Fanny Girard-Ardhuin¹⁰, Gregg Jacobs¹¹, Zorana Jelenak¹², Florent Lyard¹³, Jackie May¹¹, Elisabeth Remy¹⁴, Lionel Renaud¹³, Ernesto Rodriquez¹, Clement Ubelmann¹⁵, Bia Villas Boas¹⁶, Alex Wineteer¹ (1.NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 2.Scripps Institution of Oceanography, 3.CNRS Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 4.Florida State University, 5.NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, 6.Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, 7.CNES Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, 8.Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 9.Oregon State University, 10.IFREMER Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer, 11.Naval Research Laboratory , 12.University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, 13.LEGOS Laboratoire d'Etudes en Géophysique et Océanographie Spatiales, 14.Mercator-ocean International, 15.DATLAS, 16.Colorado School of Mines)

Keywords:Ocean, Climate, Prediction, currents

Ocean-surface vector winds, currents, and their interaction play critical roles in shaping many aspects of the Earth’s environment (e.g., weather, climate, marine ecosystems, and ocean health), affecting human safety and wellbeing both on land and at sea. However, there are significant capability gaps in observing winds, currents, and their interaction. At present, global gridded products of surface currents have coarse (~150 km) feature resolutions and rely on theoretical assumptions (geostrophic and Ekman) that break down near the equator. Moreover, there is no satellite that provides simultaneous wind-current measurements that are important for studying wind-current coupling and its impact on weather and climate. The “Ocean DYnamics and Surface Exchange with the Atmosphere” (ODYSEA) satellite mission concept is designed to alleviate these capability gaps. ODYSEA, proposed to NASA’s Earth System Explorers program in mid-2023, aims to provide the first-ever global measurements of total surface currents and simultaneous winds with 5-km data postings and near-daily coverage of the global ocean. ODYSEA builds on NASA’s heritage of scatterometry and the success of the airborne Doppler scatterometer flown as part of the Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics Experiment (S-MODE), NASA’s Earth Venture Suborbital-3 (EVS-3) mission. ODYSEA also leverages strong domestic and international partnerships. Here we present ODYSEA’s anticipated capabilities and expected contributions to understanding ocean dynamics and air-sea interaction as well as to advancing the associated predictions. The ODYSEA team looks forward to collaboration with the SynObs community to refine the requirements and to demonstrate observational impacts through Observing System Sensitivity Experiments.